Another Me
by Dark Magician Girl5
Summary: Bakura reflects on his darker self and what it’s like to be at the mercy of the Millennium Ring’s power


**Title:** Another Me

**Author: Dark Magician Girl (XDarkMagickGirlX@aol.com)**

**Pairing: Implied Yami Bakura x Bakura**

**Warnings**: References to sex and violence

**Feedback:** Comments and critiques greatly appreciated 

**Disclaimer:** Yu-Gi-Oh! and all of its characters, locations, and events do not belong to me. I'm merely borrowing a few for the time being, and promise to return them [fairly] unharmed at the end of the day.

~*~

**Another Me – **Ryou Bakura

Sixteen years may not seem like a long time to have lived, but if there's one thing I've picked up along the way so far, it's that everyone seems to be looking for one thing and one thing above everything else: to find their other half and become complete.

Most people will drag on through life, some searching mindlessly for that lost half of themselves, others too exhausted and emotionally wounded to continue the search, still others too fearful of the consequences or too ignorant of the situation to even bother looking.

Many will live and die without having find their lost half, some will have found it but either lost it or not discovered the way to put that into play, few will actually find theirs and be able to make it a permanent and unbreakable part of themselves.

I, like many, was never looking to begin with. It seemed pointless to me that, as young as I was, I could even begin to comprehend what it was that I was missing and what it was that I needed to search for in the first place. I never thought about how deeply I would be affected if I ever found my other half.

Now I know, because I've found him. Or... more accurately, he's found me.

The romance novels and movies always show the brighter side of things. They'll show two people meeting by complete accident, either having crossed the same street from opposite sides, or having somehow sensed each other's presence by completely inexplicable means. 

The two will interact shyly, unsure of what they're embarking on but drawn to each other like a moth to a burning flame, and soon that spark of interest will flare into a brushfire of yearning and love.

Sometimes the reality of that perfect, unshattered vision of love and completion is so stunningly different, distorted so violently, that it comes as an earth-shattering awakening.

The romance novels never tell the tale of two unwilling souls melding together almost by force, sharing the same host body but occupying their own spaces of mind, as different as day and night, dusk and dawn, rain and sunshine. 

The romance novels never venture into the possibilities that your other half may bear a soul darker than night, eyes more empty than a deep, starless sky in the bitter cold of winter. More importantly...

The romance novels never bothered to mention that, in some extreme cases, your other half might hate you more than hatred itself can bear.

If I was in a different position, I might be inclined to say that it's impossible for two halves of the same soul to bear anything resembling hatred towards each other. But the reality of the matter is that I've learned, through the most disturbing and scarring experiences of my life, that the one who holds that hidden piece of my soul hates me beyond even my own recognition.

Never does he pass up the chance to show me just how much, to torment me from the inside out until I'm almost positive that the moment I close my eyes I'll fade into eternal darkness. But he is darkness, and almost as soon as I think I've found true peace, I find that I've only fallen deeper into him and into his maddening velvet eyes.

In his eyes I am weak and insignificant, a complete and utter waste of humanity that should never have come into being. I shine far too brightly, he says, for anyone's good. I hide far too deeply, he says, into my own inner defenses. I threaten his personal mind space, he tells me, because at times I retreat so deeply into myself that I come across the boundaries of his occupation inside my mind and soul.

I can do nothing right, I can say no words that will make him look at me with anything less than pitiful hatred, I could never be strong enough to make him believe I am worth the life that I was given, that I am worthy of having him occupy the deepest parts of myself.

He tried to leave me once, to flee from my host body and take over another soulless being, but in the end we remained bound to each other as we are at this very moment. It seems absurd, but feeling him completely in me again was like a rush of absolute relief, because he is my certainty in this world, the one thing I can claim to be my own without a second thought.

If he is darkness, then it is _my_ darkness that he is.

If he is all evil, then it is _my_ complete evil that he is.

If he hates me, then _I_ own the depth of his resentment towards me.

We share more than two people should be allowed to share, from the same body and mind to thoughts and feelings. My pain is his, his cruelty is my own, and under the most confusing of circumstances nothing in the world could make more sense.

Because though he hurts me, again and again, emotionally and physically, though he mutilates the body I've been given until even I can't recognize myself any longer, though he fills me with so much despair and self-loathing that I begin to doubt my worth in this world... I am all he has left, and he in turn is the only thing I have in this world.

How do I know this..?

I could easily be deluded into believing that he cares nothing for me, that to him the only thing that matters is this body that we must both share and inhabit and that the lighter half that I possess is nothing but a disturbance to him, a worthless entity that he would like nothing more than to destroy with his own two hands.

But I won't believe it, because he has claimed me as his own.

Though he may be a psychotic masochist enthralled by the sight of my open wounds bleeding bright red, though he may be more than willing to inflict unimaginable amounts of pain on me again and again, though he may tell me time and time again that I mean close to nothing to him, and that he would sooner have me die so that he may take complete and utter dominion of this body... he has one weakness to speak of:

My yami is frighteningly possessive.

According to his logic, he is the only person allowed to so much as look at me. No human who walks on this earth, he has said to me in that maddeningly low voice that trickles slowly into my mind from behind his shroud of darkness, will lay his fingers upon me and still live to tell the tale. 

I've called his bluff before, but promptly thought otherwise when a boy I was innocently conversing with during physical education mysteriously appeared on the sports field with his throat torn out and an eerie emptiness in his eyes.

Do I fear him, then, this being who lives inside of me, physically mutilates me, verbally inflicts pain upon me, emotionally tears me to pieces so small I can barely find myself at times..?

Never. I never could. He won't let me fear him.

"Ryou." Always in that maddeningly low voice, always so disturbingly calm, always so undeniably persuasive although the shroud of darkness that surrounds his very essence is poison, drawing me in and suffocating the common sense from my mind. 

Because that is where he draws me, far away from the physical world of the living and into the darkest, most hidden depths of my soul where we are no longer two halves of a whole and instead two completely different people. 

Here there is no battle for possession of the host body, because we each possess our own, no struggle for dominion of consciousness because here we both have control over our own thoughts and actions.

The only thing we share is life, because his every breath is identical to my own, and if I should ever stop breathing his own breath becomes a strained sigh until he stops as well.

Here we are one, in every sense of the word. Frightening, it seems, but so right that there is no space for wondering or fighting. We just are, my yami and I, my darkness and I.

Mentally connected isn't enough in this world of inner darkness; there is a need, a strained yearning, to be physically connected as well. It's something I can't control, and something my yami doesn't fight either.

His kisses are poison, his touch electric fire, and though I tremble against him and writhe beneath him, I can't bring myself to fight him. He takes full possession of me, again and again and again, moves into me over and over again, fills me with his malice and his hatred, with his passion and his heat, with everything that he is, and yet I can't bring myself to fight him.

He finds his release in me, in the full surrender that I offer him, and yet I accept everything he gives me and more, because there is no such thing as enough; as much as he can give is not enough, and always I push him for more, more fire, more electricity, more feeling, more of everything that he is.

The darkness covets light, light yearns for the darkness, and through the height of insanity that he drives me to I find something similar to peace. Rare moments like these he allows me to rest fully against him, to take in the dizzying scent of him, to soak his sheen of sweat into my own skin and cool beside him. 

There are no words, because my yami finds speech impeding and detrimental to the raw intensity of emotions, but the strength of his arms around me is more than enough, and somehow I feel that a wordless yami is something to treasure.

"Darkness and light belong together. There's no such thing as one or the other, Ryou. They just are."

And for all of his hatred towards me, for all of the weakness and human frailty that I represent in his eyes, for all of the droplets of bright red I have bled for him, for all of the pain he can inflict upon me with as much as a single glance...

I can find myself bound to no other.

Maybe this shows the level of my own insanity, and maybe I've fallen in so deeply that there is no longer any hope left for me. If this is the case, then I embrace both the psychosis and the descent.

I'm not afraid of falling anymore, because I've found that there are only two possibilities that happen when I do let myself go:

Either I find solid ground to step off onto, or...

Someone is there waiting to teach me how to fly.

***


End file.
